


trick of the mirror

by theantepenultimateriddle



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: And then this happened, F/F, a short fic i wrote while dissociating, and i was like "what if lovelace dissociates", lovelace as an (as far as she knows) unrequited crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 03:35:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13696035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theantepenultimateriddle/pseuds/theantepenultimateriddle
Summary: There’s work to do if you want to get back to Earth, but you can’t quite remember what’s waiting for you there. What comes after revenge?





	trick of the mirror

The brightness of Wolf 359 shining in the void warps the world around you, making your quarters fluoresce strangely in the blue light. Everything around you seems huge and tiny at the same time, a space you’ll never be able to fill and one that’s crushing in on you, and you close your eyes, shutting off the world pressing down to squash you flat with darkness. But the light seeps in eventually anyways, and- you hear something in the walls, shifting. Moving towards you. Your eyes snap open and you push yourself to the center, to float there, away from the walls and the window. You can’t close your eyes again.

* * *

There are so many reflective surfaces on the station. You see a person in them every time you pass- curly hair, tall build. Tired eyes. The nametag on her uniform, reflected backwards, reading “Cpt. Isabel Lovelace”. She moves when you move, and you try not to look at her too much. Except once. Once, you stop, and you reach out. You place your palm flat against the cool surface of the mirror, and your reflection does too, and you almost vomit because of the wrongness of it. This is not you. This _can’t_ be you. You pull your hand away from the glass like you’ve been burned and move away as fast as you can without seeming like you’re running, even though your skin feels like it wants to crawl away and hide. You try much, much harder not to look at any reflective surfaces from now on. You don’t want to see the distortion of you in them.

* * *

Minkowski’s talking to you, and you’re talking back, and you can’t hear anything she’s saying. The words, the dialogue, it’s all on autopilot. You reach out and tap Minkowski on the shoulder, just once, just to make sure she’s really there (just to make sure that she’s not gone the way Eiffel is gone), but when your hand connects with her you feel worse than you did before. Her eyes widen in confusion and she opens her mouth to speak, but you’re already on your way out of the room.

* * *

You want so bad to cry, but sadness doesn’t come easily any more. Nothing comes easy- hurt, fear, happiness. Your only real feeling is anger. You can’t even fake the others.

* * *

Minkowski shivers in the corner, and Hilbert’s teeth chatter, and the chill goes straight through your skin to your bones but through your shaking you feel nothing. Minkowski’s lips are blue. The light on Hera’s camera, blinking near the ceiling, is blue. Hilbert’s eyes are blue, icy and piercing, and you jerk your head away from his gaze. Blue, blue, blue. Blue like the star and blue like a bruise and blue like veins spiderwebbing across the translucent skin of a corpse. You hate blue.

* * *

You are Prometheus, chained to a rock for your impudence. You are Pandora with her demons, you are Orpheus who trapped himself by looking back. You are Sisyphus, damned to roll your rock over and over and over.

You are a bird on a mountaintop, wiping your beak on the tip in a futile attempt to wear it down to a grain of sand.

_Doesn’t that make you happy, sweet Isabel?_

* * *

 You’re nothing. You’re everything. You are what you hate.

* * *

There are scars on your arms where they’ve broken and scars on your legs where they’ve been cut and a big one cutting through your torso, right in the middle, a reminder of how you saved Minkowski and almost damned yourself. You touch the raised skin and remember it-- the pain, the fear, the blood. Right before you lost consciousness, the flash of Minkowski’s face over you, saying your name. The memory feels so far away, but sometimes if you move too fast the scar still twinges. Not that long ago. Not that long before, you were eviscerated by a piece of flying metal trying to play the hero. Your mind switches to Minkowski, to her smile, to her strength, to how much she tries to get everything to work well even as it falls apart, to how much you want to kiss her despite what a stupid idea that would be...

She was worth it.

* * *

Captain, Captain, your king is trapped. You play with no queens and no moves left, but this time you win. Can you do it again? Can you do it forever?

* * *

You catch Eiffel getting surprised by his reflection sometimes, looking into a mirror and recoiling at the person he sees. Hera says that when she asked he replied that he wasn’t used to not having hair. You think you might know the truth, but you aren’t going to approach him with it. Sometimes it’s better if nobody knows how easy it is to forget the reality of personhood.

* * *

 “Captain-”

The gunshot drowns out the rest of Eiffel’s words, and everything goes dark.

* * *

 They wrench you into existence from the void and you don’t even _want_ to. It was comfortable there, it was quiet and dark and almost exactly like being asleep until your lungs lurched and you coughed. Everything is so bright, and so loud, and so confusing and- and it hurts, and it hurts it hurts it _hurts,_ right up until some switch in you flips off and you crumple into Minkowski’s strong arms.

* * *

 You are her. You are Isabel Lovelace. You claim the face you see in the mirror, even if it moves out of time with you. You claim the identity, even though it feels too tight around the shoulders, like it might rip if you moved too hard. You claim it. You take it. This reality is yours. The body is yours. The name, the ship, the history, the pain, they’re all yours. They need a Lovelace to be a leader. _Minkowski_ needs a Lovelace to take control- she said so, looking you in the eye like no one else had wanted to, her face so close that you almost gave up and kissed her right there. And if they need a Lovelace...

Maybe you can pretend hard enough to fool them.


End file.
